FriendShapes Online Manual

                                                                                                         FriendShapes  v 1.1.0
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Thank you very much for purchasing FriendShapes, a unique atmospheric horror lite-RPG with some rouge-lite elements where you try to reason with strange sometimes hostile beings, it's approximately 7-10 hours in length and took over 3 years to develop in RPG Maker MV

For more, check out Era's End Entities; an Analogue Horror set in the same world as FriendShapes

Plus there's FriendShapes Merch available here:

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Contents
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1. Tips
2. Help
3. Encounters in Detail
4. Save Migration
5. Known Issues
6. How to Fix Crashes Due To Missing Files
7. Change Log

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                                                                                                        1. Tips
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Speeding up:
- You can increase how fast text is displayed both in and out of Digressions via the Options Menu
- You can toggle FastForward Mode on and off during Encounters to make the pauses shorter by pressing Shift/X on Joypad

Starting out:
- Stock up on Items, some friends outside the Digression may give you some
    - Talking to TradeMark and letting Hifive explain Digressions will net you some free items
- Items usable for interacting with Shapes from your Inventory: Cloth Rag, Niap, Pain, Warmth of Another

Digressions:
- Keep your stats up when continuing deeper into the Digression; text events can damage your stats and end your venture prematurely without warning
- Running out of Wellbeing, Sanity or Focus in a Digression takes you back outside, while the items you used are gone, any Credit you earned or other items you found are still yours

Encounters:
- Withdrawing isn't (usually) the same as running away
- For a variety of results during encounter interactions:
    - Most usual interactions can be used at least twice before returning the same result - baring unique reactions to a Shape's previous action (see below)
    - Using a specific interaction in reaction to Shape's last action may result in a different outcome
    - Context Actions may be gained during an Encounter or be available from the start - a cog animation will play in the bottom right of the screen if a new Context Move is available
    - Context Actions may disappear if the window to use them is lost
- Trying new things in an Encounter increases FOCUS and CREDIT reward
- A few Shapes may need to be waited out while trying to mitigate damage sustained to yourself
- Usually if there's no Focus heal for an action, then repeating the action will yield the same result, (unless it becomes a reaction to a Shape's specific last move)
- Most Shapes have 2 different paths (Orange path and Blue path, shown at the bottom left of the Encounter screen) that fill up from specific actions or reactions, some Shapes have additional, hidden alternate ways to end their Encounter as well. There is a noise and visual effect on the bottom left of the screen indicating if Blue or Orange has been filled, along with two boxes that show their progression.


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                                                                                                         2. Help
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Some information for those that may be unsure of what to do or wish to know the game loop better:
- There is a autosave feature, but it only happens half-way through a Digression - to save your game properly, speak to the Scape who is left of the gate in the central hub
- Losing does not end the game, instead returning outside of the Digression, you keep the items you found but don't have any you used returned to you
- The game can be played with most gamepads, keyboard and also mouse (using mouse for navigation via clicking is not recommended due to the 3D elements)
- There are in-depth Controls instructions within the Archive option in the pause menu after the intro (assuming you don't weird Edmonton out too much in your first meeting)
- Dash is disabled during the introductory sequence
- There are two Digressions in the West, others to the East, which you'll be allowed to traverse after completing at least one Digression
- Digressions tend to be ten areas long with text events between them

- Holding Enter will skip text fast, holding Shift will speed through it so fast you won't be able to read it
- If you are having trouble, try Assisted Mode; it grants a status condition that heals every Exchange in Encounters as well as traversing in the Digressions


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                                                                                                         3. Encounters in Detail
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In case you're having a hard time coming to grips with the Encounter system:

The order of events in a Exchange (turn)

1. The player chooses what they want to do, from the usual choices to a Context move to using an item (and choosing to use the item on themselves or the Shape, if the item allows)
2. Player chosen action happens first, depending on the current state of the Shape, what happens may be different than what would normally happen (depending usually on the Shape's last move)
3. If the Player Action affects the Shape in a way that increases or decreases their Blue or Orange path, a sound will play, along with an animation on the bottom left of the screen
4. The Shape's action happens, this can be random, part of a set sequence or a reaction to the player's last move. This can cause damage or a status effect
5. If neither of the Shape paths are completed, the Player takes the ambient Shape damage (shown on the right of the screen)
6. If the Player was at low sanity, causing the room to start spinning and have healed their Sanity enough this Exchange to recover, the room will stop spinning at this point
7. It becomes the Players turn once again.

The object is to find ways and means around each Encountered Shape, figuring out ways to placate or otherwise get around them to keep moving through the Digression.
This is achieved usually by filling the Shape's Blue or Orange path


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                                                                                                         4. Save Migration
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To move your save file from one version of FriendShapes to another (or demo save file to full release):
    Locate the "Save" folder found in the "www" folder
    Copy and paste it from the older version of FriendShapes to the newest one's "www" folder and let it overwrite any files

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                                                                                                         5. Known Issues
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- Slowdown - The game may slow down sometimes depending on your set-up and RPG Maker's general weirdness, be sure to check your graphics card's settings - it's been reported that some systems try to run the game via the onboard GPU rather than your actual card - changing this makes an extreme difference

- Controls - With dynamic 3D cameras in RPG Maker, it may be difficult to align yourself with something you want to interact with, clicking on the object you wish to interact with using the mouse may lead you straight to it, or you may need to hold down two direction keys at once

- Screen Effects getting stuck on screen - taking damage in the overworld while moving diagonally can cause this - try pausing and unpausing to clear the screen (taking damage in the same way while not moving diagonally can also fix this) - My only guess for the cause is that RPG Maker MV wasn't designed for diagonal movement so the damage sequence gets interrupted by the player moving both horizontally and vertically

- Options - If the config and/or global file in the www/save folder isn't there, the Shadow Quality option will break and turn off when entering the Options menu in-game, and will not be restorable outside of either changing the option from the main menu or pasting the original Config/Global file back into the folder - don't ask me why this happens I wish I knew and didn't have to replace certain files manually after every deployment

- Encounter Battle Log - Unfortunately there's very little control to be had on the battle log in RPG Maker MV - I can't make it so you can read back on previous messages or even change the font's colour - which I would do if I could, I can only apologise and hope you don't mind it too much that the first encounter with Edmonton may be a bit confusing on who is talking (it's Edmonton monologing the entire time)


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                                                                                                         6. How to Fix Crashes Due To Missing Files
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I've hopefully fixed this specific issue but just in case I've missed something, here's the information on this:

I found very late into development that some of the music name files the game has, which have accented or unusual characters, (such as the "í" in Mícheart Jinsil's name,) somehow cause a retranslation by systems that have their locale to a language very different to English - so far Japanese and Russian have been discovered to have this happen - the file's "í" was replaced by a "｡" in the "Mauerbauertraurigkeit Semaphorism (Mícheart Jinsil)" file, and as such, RPG Maker couldn't find it, as all that was there was "Mauerbauertraurigkeit Semaphorism (M｡cheart Jinsil)"

RPG Maker MV tries to reference files to use and if it can't find the file, it'll crash and tell you what file it can't find and where it should be

I've tried to rename all of the song files that have accented letters in the hopes it won't crash for anyone - but RPG Maker being what it is, (there's no search function that can help me track down every call for each track - and it all needs to be done manually) - so if you do encounter a crash saying a file is missing, you should be able to fix it via duplicating the appropriate file then renaming the duplicate without having to exit the game... it's not the most elegant solution I'm afraid:

- Go into where the file causing the error is located, such as "FriendShapes\audio\bgm"
- Copy-paste the file so a copy appears with "- copy" at the end
- Rename the duplicate file to what the game is looking for (original names listed below)
- Clicked Retry on the error screen
- Let me know when and where this happened so I fix it

Given I've renamed and hopefully changed every reference instance of the songs there -shouldn't- be this problem anymore unless I missed something, here are the original songs names that I changed in case you do discover one I missed:

Catoptric Tristesse Cafuné (Mr Dac)
Dépaysement (Dimensional Inferiority)
Mångata (The Timeless Chorus)
Mauerbauertraurigkeit Semaphorism (Mícheart Jinsil)
Mauerbauertraurigkeit Semaphorism (Mícheart Jinsil) Intro
Pâro Backpfeifengesicht (A Reflection) Estonteco
Pâro Backpfeifengesicht (A Reflection) Nuna
Pâro Backpfeifengesicht (A Reflection) Pasinteco
Vemödalen (Conceptual Parasite)
Vemödalen (Conceptual Parasite) Intro

I took out all of the accented letters from these tracks and hopefully caught every instance of them being used in the game, but if I didn't, your best bet is to find the file, duplicate it then rename the duplicate to the original name listed above so the game can find both versions of it and continue to work
I left some of the original intro tracks in there as well as the renamed versions as they're very small in file size and it'll potentially prevent some crashes


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                                                                                                          7. Change Log
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v1.1.0 (03/Feb/2024) - presumably on Steam release??
     -    Fix:
             Fixed instance of crash on a Axenic Shape from music mislabelling

     -    Changes:
             Added Scape saves to final digression (Thanks to TheFoxyDragon for feedback on this)

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